Handy Hintze

A hedge-fund gambler who has donated the value of half a dozen intimate Daveybloke dinners and loaned the cost of ten more, Michael Hintze is also a sponsor of Nigel Lawson's Global Warming Policy Foundation, which criticises scientists for lack of transparency and the BBC for lack of debate, but refuses transparency over its own donors in case they suffer public criticism, or debate in Standard English. Hintze has also been terribly obliging towards the former Foreign Secretary, Adam Werritty, providing him with free office space in which to recuperate from the charm of Liam Fox and, in a delightful echo of the ever-so-special Ashcroft-Hague relationship, taking both Werritty and Fox on trips in his private jet. Thus it appears that the latest lobbying scandal may yet prove a blessing in disguise for the greenest government ever. Had Peter Cruddas' little indiscretion not forced the Conservative Party into assuring us that financial donations have no effect whatever on policy, Lord Ashcroft only knows what the more uncharitable among us might have made of all this.